


The King of Hearts

by ladylapislazuli



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Dimitri is confused, Felix is in denial, In-Universe RPF, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:21:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23623813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladylapislazuli/pseuds/ladylapislazuli
Summary: A lewd novel. Somebody has written a lewd novel. AboutDimitri.“Who,” Felix snarls, “did this.”---In which people are writing romantic stories about their king, and only Felix seems to be taking it seriously.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 59
Kudos: 349





	The King of Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings: please note this fic contains sexual references of the extremely cringy kind. Take that as you will.

Given Dimitri’s age, status and reputation, Felix supposes he should have predicted that something like this might happen.

The cover of the book in front of him is… lurid. Rough, cheaply produced and badly drawn. At its centre is a wildly inaccurate illustration of a man who is, Felix can only assume, supposed to be their noble and righteous king. Shirt billowing open, blond hair far longer than it is in reality, and his face only recognisable by virtue of the eye patch covering his right eye.

Felix stares at the cover. He’s distantly aware that his jaw is hanging open, that Sylvain is banging his hand on the table and laughing at him, clearly delighting in his horror. Felix can’t even spare him a glare. It feels alarmingly like his brain might have stopped working entirely.

He reaches out. Half expecting the book to simply burst into flames as he gingerly picks it up.

 _Majesty Mine_ , the title reads. And the cover art depicts _Dimitri_. As in His Royal Majesty, King Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd. As in Felix’s childhood – well, once-friend, kind-of friend, whatever they are. The point is – this is supposed to be Dimitri. Not some fantasy king from a made-up world, but _Dimitri_.

Felix’s eyebrow twitches in a way that threatens imminent explosion. Not quite feeling the anger yet – but it’s coming.

 _“What_ ,” he grinds out.

“I found it in the marketplace,” Sylvain says with barely restrained glee. “I got one of the last copies, too. It was selling quickly.”

Selling quickly. Which means not only is someone writing this garbage, but people in the kingdom are actually _reading_ it.

Felix looks at the cover again. At Dimitri’s ludicrously dramatic pose, billowed by the coastal wind - even though the palace in Fhirdiad is not near the sea - with some woman clinging to his side. And _some woman_ is the best description that may be offered her – the artist has not even attempted to render a character. She is the back of a dress and some long hair, the blankest slate possible. All of the artist’s efforts have gone into sculpting Dimitri a ridiculous jawline. Square, with a cleft chin, somehow rendered nearly as wide as his shoulders as he gazes longingly down at the mystery lady.

Dimitri’s jawline isn’t like that at all, Felix thinks faintly. Hardly the most salient point, but one he gets stuck on nonetheless. Dimitri’s features are, if anything, quite fine, though his nose is larger than depicted here. His pose is equally farcical - Felix can’t imagine Dimitri standing with one leg propped up on a rock and half his chest exposed to the elements like some cocky pirate, muscles bulging out of his sleeves as he radiates rugged handsomeness.

The real Dimitri is plain on a good day, and blandly handsome at best - not generally sought out for his beauty. According to this illustration, though, he may well be the handsomest man to have ever graced the mortal plane.

Seeing the cover should be enough for Felix to make a judgment, but somehow he finds himself opening the book anyway. A man witnessing a disaster, and going in for a closer look.

_“Oh my dove,” said the king, pressing a delicate kiss to her elegant, swan-like neck. “You are fairer than all the stars in the sky. More beautiful than a rose blooming in the spring.”_

_She shivered, feeling the raw masculinity of his stubble against her skin and the strength in his arms. She swooned, feeling a strange warmth in some part of her she never knew she had. Barely able to speak as his raw masculine beauty overwhelmed her._

_“Alas, king though I am, I am only a mortal man,” said King Dimitri. “I have never desired one as I do you.”_

_“Oh your Majesty,” she gasped. Her every nerve on fire as his rugged, handsome face loomed closer to hers._

_The king kissed her, slowly, passionately, his tongue mingling with hers. Then his hand came up, big and broad, to cup her br_ _-_

Felix throws the book down so roughly that it skids across the table. He is panting, wild-eyed. His eyebrow twitches again, entirely out of his control.

“Good, isn’t it?” Sylvain says between bursts of seemingly uncontrollable laughter.

A lewd novel. Somebody has written a lewd novel. About _Dimitri_.

 _“Who_ ,” Felix snarls, “ _did this_.”

\- - -

Unfortunately, _Majesty Mine_ is barely the beginning. As the book’s popularity surges, other amateur writers and artists step forward to produce their own - their own _garbage_ about the reigning king, and the whole thing spirals out of control from there.

“This is a national disgrace,” Felix growls. “It’s outrageous.”

He is sitting in the official Council Chambers, though it’s only a small party gathered here today. Felix, Sylvain, Dedue, and Annette, who has inexplicably taken a day off from her duties at the Royal School of Sorcery to follow him up here, and has spent most of the morning giggling behind her hand.

Dimitri isn’t even here. Felix stormed into Fhirdiad with an armful of the outrageous and offensive ‘creations’, and grabbed anyone he could find to formulate a plan to deal with it.

Nobody else seems to be taking this as seriously as he is.

“Come on, Felix,” Sylvain says. “It’s just a bit of fun.”

“It’s lewd material. About our _king_. Created by unknown authors for unknown purposes.”

“Oh, I think we know _why_ ,” Sylvain interjects with a leer, though he subsides when Felix casts him a furious look.

“We can’t allow this to continue,” Felix says, slamming his hand down on the table. “He’s our king, and the nation is still recovering from war. This will damage his reputation.”

As speeches go, this one proves disappointingly ineffective. Annette barely looks up from the filthy novella she’s flipping through, still snickering. Sylvain is picking at his fingernails, and while Dedue appears to be listening, he’s not doing much more than that.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Sylvain drawls. He still looks entirely too amused about the whole affair. “If anything, it’s rehabilitative. Makes him seem… approachable.” Sylvain grins, obviously thinking of something else entirely, and Felix glares at him. As usual, Sylvain is unperturbed. “Don’t be like that, Felix, it’s harmless. It’s making him more popular, if anything. And given his record during the war, anything that softens his image isn’t exactly a bad thing.”

“Sylvain’s right,” Annette says when she finally deigns to stop giggling. Felix whirls around to glare at her too, but she only holds up her hands. “Don’t look at me like that, Felix. Everyone knows it’s just fiction. Besides, I think it’s kind of cute! Even some of my students have started swooning over him – it’s super awkward, don’t even ask.” That part is directed as Sylvain, who has visibly perked up. Annette turns back to Felix. “It’s better than people being scared of him, anyway.”

“He’s the king, they _should_ be scared.” At dubious looks from around the table, Felix amends through gritted teeth, “Fine, not scared. But he should at least be respected. And this – this _filth_ is doing the opposite.”

“I don’t think anyone’s taking it as seriously as you are,” Annette says, with just enough hesitation that Felix can tell she’s trying to be diplomatic.

Felix inhales a sharp breath of air, words leaping to his tongue, but Sylvain beats him to it.

“Just think, it might even help Dimitri find himself a wife. All those lovely ladies pining after him, just waiting for their chance… Though actually, when I think about it, he’s never exactly been good at talking to women. Even these might not help him…”

“You’re a joke,” Felix spits at him, but Sylvain just shrugs. “Aren’t any of you going to help me handle this?”

“Eh,” says Sylvain.

“Hn,” says Dedue.

Annette doesn’t say anything. She just picks up another one of the books, flips it open, and immediately shoves a hand over her mouth to stifle her giggles.

And that, apparently, is as much as Felix is getting out of any of them.

\- - -

It’s just Felix’s luck to run into Dimitri as Felix is storming out of the Council Chambers, thwarted by his so-called friends and fully intending to go and stab something at the training yards.

“Oh, hello Felix,” says a familiar voice behind him.

Felix pauses in his angry stride down the corridor. Turns to face the man of the hour, the king himself, the subject of some of the most brazen material Felix has ever had the misfortune of laying his eyes on.

It’s anticlimactic, really. Dimitri looks nothing like the novels describe him. He looks… well. Like himself. Tired, and harried, and a little too thin.

“Dimitri,” Felix returns.

“I heard you’d arrived in Fhirdiad,” Dimitri says. Stepping closer, the faint hint of a smile on his face. Friendly, but not overly so. “Are you on your way to the training yards?”

Dimitri is tall, at least those awful writers got that right. That, and nothing else.

“Yes,” Felix says.

“Well, don’t let me keep you. I hope I shall see you at dinner, though. It’s been some time.” Dimitri smiles again. A curve of his thin lips, nothing more. Nothing swoon-worthy, at any rate.

“I’ll be there. Later.”

Felix doesn’t leave, though, not at once. Instead he stares at Dimitri. Takes in his fair hair – not the colour of spun gold, as some moron wrote, but a cool blond. And Dimitri must be spending time outdoors because his skin is tanned darker than his hair, but Felix sincerely doubts he’s been standing dramatically on cliff-sides, just waiting to save the protagonist-of-the-hour from some melodramatic fall. There isn’t a twinkle of roguish charm barely contained beneath his kingly exterior, either – on the contrary, Dimitri’s blinking at him with the head-cocked blankness of a confused rooster.

“Bye,” Felix grunts, and high-tails it out of there, his face feeling oddly hot. All too aware of the bag positively brimming with inappropriate Dimitri-related material that’s strapped across his chest.

It’s outrageous. It really is, and something has to be done about it.

Somehow, despite sitting next to Dimitri for the entirety of dinner, Felix can’t bring himself to mention it to him.

\- - -

The books keep coming. More and more every day. And Felix, as the lone dissenter in the royal council, is unable to do anything to stem their tide.

People are shameless, he knows that, but the depths of their depravity never fails to shock him. Felix thought _Majesty Mine_ was lewd – looking back, it was positively tame compared to some of the filth that’s being spewed out of the printing presses.

Felix reads the phrase _the king’s massive throbbing love-lance_ and almost sets his entire office on fire in his attempts to purge its existence.

And that isn’t even the worst part of it. Because after people are finished disgracing themselves with explicit material, they turn to inane, sickening _romances._

_“O-oh, C-Cassandra I-I,” stammered the king._

_Cassandra giggled. He was so cute and funny and he blushed a lot. It was really very cute._

_“Yes?” she asked in her sweet melodic voice._

_“W-will you let me t-take you t-to the school b-ball?”_

Schoolgirl romances. About their crowned king. Who is, and this cannot be stressed enough, a grown man, and would be either oblivious to or dismayed by the inappropriate admiration of a sixteen-year-old. And would not, as this poor excuse for a story posits, take her to the end-of-year school ball in a horse-drawn carriage and ask her to be his _girlfriend_.

Felix doesn’t set fire to that one, but it’s a near thing.

There’s a lot of melodrama, too. Wish-fulfillment of the most eye-watering kind. Countless books and stories full of Dimitri catching fainting women in his ‘big strong arms’ and proposing marriage in convenient downpours of rain. Some of them steamy, but many of them ending only with a _passionate kiss_ , and if Felix has to read that phrase one more time he might start setting fire to the printing presses themselves.

He doesn’t understand how they’re so _popular_. It feels like he can hardly move without stumbling across yet another inappropriate story about their king. If you’d told Felix a year ago that Dimitri - _Dimitri_ \- would be the subject of such public and open desire, he would have laughed in your face.

Dimitri is barely good-looking. He’s leggy, and leaner than he looks in his armour, and covered in scars. His top lip juts slightly over the lower one. His nose is strong, and even though he’s mostly grown into it, it’s still too strong for his face sometimes. Admittedly he’s filled out since he was a teenager, and admittedly his hair is better, and admittedly he expresses more _character_ than he used to rather than hiding behind vapid smiles, but -

It doesn’t make any sense.

Dimitri isn’t sweet, or charming, or sensual, as these authors want him to be. He’s not a handsome, winsome leading man just waiting for the right lady to come along so he can sweep her off her feet.

Dimitri’s stubborn, and difficult, and prone to black swings of mood. He's not a bad man. He means well, generally speaking, but he’s rigid in his thinking. Struggles to see shades of grey and looks continually surprised whenever Felix proposes alternative ideas to him about things he’s never thought to question. He’s both too idealistic and too set in his ways, an infuriating combination that makes advising him a never-ending argument. But he’s also intelligent, and determined, and kind in his slightly awkward way, and he works harder than anyone else Felix knows. He’s a good king – probably a great one.

None of these things, either his flaws or the true virtues of his temperament, ever make it into the books.

_“What am I without you?” the king cried out, passionate. “How can I rule without my beloved at my side? Be not cruel, my angel. Do not tell me I am too late. You have me on my knees, and I beg you to be merciful. Take pity on me, sweet lady, and consent to be my queen.”_

There is also that. Felix has known Dimitri for many years – too many, all things considered. Even in the greatest heights of emotion, he cannot imagine Dimitri making a speech like _that_.

"If you have time tomorrow, Felix, perhaps you would stop by my office?" Dimitri says when he next catches Felix in the corridor. "There is a difficult point of tenancy law under revision, and I would appreciate your input."

His blond hair is tousled, today, and he smells distinctly of horse, as though he has just come from a ride. A far cry from how he is in the stories, in which he inexplicably smells of sandalwood. An unexpectedly pervasive idea, especially given its inaccuracy.

"Fine," says Felix.

He has no idea where these stories are coming from. No idea at all. They're an _outrage_ , and somebody has to do something about them.

He just has to figure out _what_.

**Author's Note:**

> for the record dimitri is the most beautiful anime man in the world and you cannot change my mind 
> 
> ayy I'm @ladylapisxx on Twitter


End file.
